Contributor: Henry T.
Written by Paul Grellong
Directed by Jon Cassar
Every passing episode of this show convinces me that it was a big mistake to jump forward in time to fifteen years after the blackout. It has resulted in an odd parceling out of the various stories for all the characters and there’s no flow to any of it. What doesn’t help things is that all of the flashbacks are not only jumbled, but they are randomly inserted in the middle of all these episodes while the main action is going on.
I was thinking about putting down the dates and action in a timeline notebook of sorts for the show, but that seemed like too much work. I really don’t think the the time period chryons (“six weeks after the blackout”, etc.) really make much of a difference. This is one of a few major complaints I have about this series, which I still think is fundamentally flawed (yet popular from a ratings standpoint), and taking more time than I expected to course-correct. Captain Neville remains a favorite character of mine and the writers finally put him in a showcase episode here, but he’s still stuck acting opposite the teenage characters for the most part. It doesn’t yield great results when the worst characters on the show go up against the best character. They are trying, but this really isn’t the time to experiment with what works and what doesn’t work on a series. The world of the show needs to continue to be built, and I would think that is the higher priority.
After burying Maggie, the group has somehow closed in on Captain Neville, who is transporting Danny to Philadelphia for General Monroe. The surprise here (and it’s not really a surprise) is that Neville and the Monroe Republic have a working steam locomotive train. Fans have been wondering for some time now that since there is no electrical power in the world, the world had to essentially go back to the beginnings of the Industrial Age. The episode in 2027 becomes a race against time to get to that train before it departs for Philadelphia. Charlie and Miles obviously want to get Danny. Nora wants to destroy the train since it’s full of high-ranking Monroe Republic officers. Since the recap that opens the episode focused so intently on the fact that Nora is “good at blowing things up”, this had to come about with a bomb cleverly disguised as a log to stoke the fire that powers the train. At the last moment, though, Nora becomes a sympathetic resistance fighter and regrets putting the bomb on the train.
Had the show gone ahead and blown up the train, it would have given all of the events a sort of hard edge. The resistance would be seen as a legitimate threat to the Monroe Republic. The show doesn’t want to take that risk, and this comes one episode after killing off a supposed member of the main cast. The execution of the plot is botched since the plot has to get back to the status quo. Miles takes out the bomb before it explodes on the train, and Danny remains in the hands of Captain Neville, on his way to a reunion with his long-lost mother in Philadelphia. It could have ended differently if Charlie didn’t act in such a puzzling manner. She finally meets Captain Neville face-to-face, gets away with a bald-faced lie that had Neville temporarily convinced (though that could have easily been an act, which adds to the chameleon-like quality of the character), then had the gall to follow him into some alleyway only to get caught.
Charlie has been compared to Katniss Everdeen because of the similarity of their circumstances, but the key difference is that Katniss knows how to operate within the rules of her world. It makes her look smart and a natural product of that future world. I don’t think Charlie even knows the rules of this world! She knows that Neville is dangerous, she was told to stay away from him, yet she follows him in the most obvious way so as to get herself in a bind. She is back to her whiny, begging, annoying ways so I can’t bring myself to buy her steely resolve at the end of the episode. Her demeanor has no consistency, changing from episode to episode depending on the needs of the plot.
The focus on Captain Neville’s character was hit-and-miss in this episode. We see that he’s fired from his insurance adjuster job and that he’s so nebbish that he can’t get his neighbor to turn down his party music on the day of the blackout. That puts his change in temperament in context. The blackout released him from that meek life he had been living. Part of that was his desperation beating of his neighbor in front of his wife and son. All of that made Neville the man we see as the most feared man in Monroe’s army. It gives context to seemingly pointless scenes like Neville engaging in a bare-knuckle fistfight with Danny. I think a part of Neville relishes being the bad guy, and he carries it so well.
Also, it cushions the blow from the admittedly lame twist that Nate is actually Neville’s son, Jason. Nate’s character has been so bland that it’s hard to think that they are father and son. We also meet Neville’s wife in 2027, and she continues this show’s tradition of putting impractical clothing on many of its characters. The show needs more characters like Neville, though, and those are in rather short supply. There isn’t a concrete reason to hate the Monroe Republic. General Monroe continues to threaten and break Rachel, but it’s largely static. Rachel admits to one piece of relevant information: There are twelve power pendants out there, and we’ve seen two of them so far. So the rest of the season is dedicated to finding the other ten? We don’t know, but Neville keeps the series watchable for now.
The show is this odd mess of different things. I want to see different things with every episode. More and more, I want to see how the world is shaped in the immediate aftermath of the blackout. Jumping around in time periods does no good. How did the US divide itself into six different republics, judging by the map we see in this episode for example? The answer might bore audiences and turn the series into a sociological experiment, but it’s arguable that would be a unique approach here instead of showing yet another generic action sequence. I think everyone involved is struggling to find the right balance in deploying all of its elements as each episode airs. They have time to figure it out, but there isn’t much notable improvement or consistency. I worry that they aren’t addressing the flaws and smoothing things over by pointing to the big ratings for the show. Time will tell if this will last.
Score: 6/10
